Sunday, August 11, 2013

Park Zone PZ-1600 Precision Parking Aid

I got this unit because my wife would pull into our garage a little too far every now and then. This left a tight space in front of her car where we store cat food, pop, grocery bags, etc. so it always made for a tight fit. The straw that broke the camels back is when my wife cut her left on her front license plate trying to squeeze through. Granted, if she wouldn't have pulled up so far, she wouldn't have cut her leg. But what's done is done so I wanted to look at options to help her park in the garage perfectly every time.

The tennis ball idea was the obvious one but I work in the garage a lot so I didn't want to keep walking into a hanging tennis ball. For the $20 price tag, I decided to give this one a shot from Amazon. If I didn't like it I could send it back because Amazon's return process is AWESOME and FAST! No need on this unit though.

There are 3 pieces to this unit: the "stop light" (red, amber, green), sensor unit, and coiled phone cord that connects in between them. I simply mounted the stop light on a set of cupboards in front of her car using heavy duty velcro (in case I ever needed to remove temporarily). I installed the sensor unit just below the cupboards about 2 feet away from the front bumper and then connected both with the coiled phone cord.

Setup is EASY! Just make sure you have the car parked where you need it and point the sensor toward the bumper. Press the On button (right on the front of the stop light) and it cycles through the lights and "learns" the distance in just a couple of seconds.

The unit can detect the vehicle from 16 feet out so when the car approaches the sensor, the green light illuminates. As you get closer to the sensor, it turns to amber and then finally red when you should stop. It works perfectly and best of all, my wife loves it. There are many days when she comes home from work and just wants to pull in the garage and get our of her work clothes but the system is so easy that she takes the extra second or two to watch the lights and stop when she hits red.

There is an option to connect an AC adapter on this unit but I am using 15-minute rechargeable batteries so I will opt for the clean installation. Also, even though the stop light unit is mounted on the front of the cupboard, we can still open the cupboard door without disrupting the sensor system. The coiled phone cord can easily stretch to about 4 feet so no worries there.

This unit is HIGHLY recommended!

PROS

1. Installation and set up was a breeze. Install in minutes with the screws provided.

2. It uses 2AA batteries so no need to place device near an outlet.

3. Gives excellent visual feedback. It alerts you with a green, yellow and red light to slowly guide you as you approach your desired distance.

I have to admit that I was pretty suspicious about this product. My wife like to back in her SUV into the garage. She never hits the wall but sometimes she doesn't go in far enough and then she either has to start it up and back in more or the garage door hits her front bumper and then she gets mad and *then* she has to start it up and back in more. Anyway, I decided to give this a try.

All I can say is, the thing works great. It's very easy to install and it takes just a few seconds to set the exact parking distance.

This device is a lot better than other I have seen. With others, they have a switch to set the parking distance to 1ft, 2ft, 3ft, etc. That's very inflexible. For the PZ-1600, you park to exactly where you want to be and then press the button on the device. From then on, you end up parking within an inch or so of where you set it the first time. It's terrific, and way better than trying to adjust a tennis ball. Now I can always raise the hatch and the garage door never dings the front bumper. Problem solved!